A LETTER From The LORD OF LECESTER, To the RIGHT HONOVRABLE, The EARLE of NORTHUMBERLAND; And by him comunicated to the Houſe of PEERES.
Declaring the true cauſes of his long ſtay at Court, and with what earneſt deſires hee continually preſſed his Maieſty to aſſigne his diſpatch, which he notwithſtanding denyed to grant.
Alſo how, and in what manner his Majeſty tooke away the Horſes, bought by the Parliament, for the ſervice of Ireland, and imployed them to his owne uſe.
Die Lunae, Sep. 26. 1642.
ORdered by the Lords in Parliament, that this Letter be forthwith Printed and publiſhed.
Sep. 27. London Printed for Iohn Wright. 1642.
THough I have written thrice to the Commiſſioners for the affaires of Ireland ſince my comming from London to give them account of my ſtay at Court, and that I have alſo written ſeverall Letters to ſome particular friends in hope that thereby the truth might be knowne, and my ſelfe•ightly underſtood. Yet becauſe theſe Letters peradventure may have miſcarried, and leſt I ſhould incurre the cenſure of the Parliament for negligence or ſlackneſſe in that ſervice to which I have been deſigned, I will truly & as briefly as I can relate to your Lordſhip how I have behaved my ſelfe and if your Lordſhip pleaſe you may Communicate it to the Houſe of Peeres, as in your iudgment and favour to me you ſhall thinke fit, and I hope it will appeare that as I have bin very impatient of this delay, ſo I have not wanted diligence in the Solicitation of my diſpatch,
When I came to Yorke I told the King that I was come thither to receive his Maieſties Commandments and Inſtructions for that imployment: which he had done me the honour to confer upon me, and I did humbly beſeech him that I might not be ſtayed at Court becauſe the Parliament did deſire my ſpeedy repair into Jreland, and that this ſervice as I conceived did require it at leaſt that ſome governour (if I were not thought worthy of it) ſhould be preſently ſent into that Kingdome; the King told me he would thinke of it; but I muſt confeſſe I did not find his Majeſty ſo ready to diſpatch me as I hoped and expected. From that time I did not faile to beſeech his Maieſty to ſend me away, upon every oportunity I had of ſpeaking to him, and I thinke there paſſed not a day, that I did not deſire the Secretaries of State and ſome other perſons about the King, to put his Maieſty in mind of me, and to haſten my diſmiſſion: and diverſe times I made it my Petition to the King, that he would diſpatch me, or declare his intention that hee would not let me goe at all.
The King ſaid my inſtructions ſhould be drawn, and that he would give Order to Maſter Secretary Nicholas to doe it as ſpeedily as he could, in expectation whereof, I ſtayed about three weekes, till the King came from Yorke, when his Majeſty appoynted me to follow him to Nottingham, and there I ſhould have my expeditions, I obey'd his Maj. and came after him to this Town, where I have attended ever ſince, perpetually ſoliciting to bee diſpatched, and beſeeching his Majeſty that I might either goe to my imployment, or have his leave to retire my ſelfe to my owne houſe and private condition, that if he were unwilling to truſt me in an imployment of ſo great importance, I did beſeech him that I might be no burthen to his thoughts, and that he would be ſo gracious as to let me know his reſolution, for I conceived my ſelf to be under a heavy cenſure, both of the Parliament and of the whole Kingdome, whilſt poſsibly they might thinke it my fault that I was ſo long abſent from that charge which I had undertaken. It is to no purpoſe to tell you every paſſage, but this I profeſſe to your Lordſhip, that if it bad beene to ſave the lives of all my Friends, and of my ſelfe, I could not have done more for my diſpatch, nevertheleſſe I have not beene able to advance it one ſtep, nor have I ſeene any token to make me hope to have it quickly till this morning, when Maſter Secretary Nicholas gave me a draught of my inſtructions to peruſe, and ſo I hope that betweene this and monday I ſhall have done that part, and I will doe the beſt I can in procuring ſome other things, without which I know not how I ſhall be able to doe any acceptable ſervice in that Kingdome; your Lordſhip knowes I am a ſervant, and I could not run away if I would, or at leaſt it had beene to little purpoſe though I ſhould have adventured to doe ſo undecent and ſo undutifull an action. Therefore I hope it will be beleeved that I have not beene too blame.
Now with your Lordſhips leave, I ſhall trouble you with another perticular, wherein perhaps I ſuffer in the opinion of them that knew not what hath paſſed, though I be as innocent as a new borne Child,••y I have oppoſed it as much as I had power to doe, ſo the King being informed at Yorke by ſome officious perſons, that there were certain draught horſes provided to be ſent into Jreland, his Majeſty told me that he muſt needs have them for his owne uſe, I did humbly beſeech him not to take them away from his owne ſervice in Jreland, for which they were bought, and in which they were to bee impolyed, and beſides what I ſaid my ſelfe, I made means by others to ſave the horſes, ſo as I heard no more of it till I came hither, but then his Majeſty told me againe, that he muſt needs have thoſe horſes, and would have me ſend for them, I repreſented to his Majeſty the inconſiderableneſſe of thoſe few horſes, and that the Parliament might take it very ill, in regard that the horſes were bought with their money for the ſervice of the poor Kingdom of Ireland, therfore I did beſeech him not to take them, or however that he would ſecure me from being an inſtrument in that which I conceived would much hurt his affaires, and that I being truſted by the Parliament, I could neither doe it my ſelfe, nor conſent that any other ſhould doe that which was a breach of truſt, and a great diſervice, even to his Majeſty himſelfe, notwithſtanding this the King ſent unto me by Maſter Endimion Porter, and Sir George Hay, at ſeverall times to the like purpoſe, but I returned the ſame anſwer, adding this alſo, that I could not doe it and be an honeſt man to his ſervice, though it be true that the King ſaid he would reſtore the horſes, or pay for them, but for all this, it pleaſed his Majeſty to imploy one Erington that ſerved me, and gave him a warrant to fetch the horſes, Erington told me of it, I forbad him as far as I could to doe it, and told him that if he did it, he muſt not looke to have any thing more to doe with me for ever, and further that I made no doubt but the Parliament would hang him for ſtealing their horſes. This and more I ſaid to Erington, in the preſence of James Battiere my Secretary, who will witnes it, & conceiving it to be an unjuſt thing in it ſelf, diſpleaſing to the Parliament, and hurtfull to the Kings ſervice, I proteſted againſt it, though Erington ſaid, his Maſter had commanded him upon his allegiance to execute the warrant, but indeed I told him that I did not beleeve him, nor could thinke that his Majeſty would command a Subject upon his allegiance to take away other mens Horſes, this I thought ſufficient, but it ſeemes I was deceived, for Erington without my conſent or knowledge, went from Nottingham towards Cheſter, as I heard afterwards, and I have never ſeene him ſince, nor heard from him, what he hath done I doe not know, but I ſent to Cheſter that the horſes ſhould be preſently ſhipt away, and I cauſed my Secretary to write to Maſter Hawkins, to take care that neither Erington nor any body for him, ſhould receive any more money of Maſter Loftus, or his Deputy, to provide the reſt of the horſes, for as yet I thinke there hath bin only 1600 li. iſſued to buy 200. of the 600. horſes allowed by the Parliament, and of that 1600 li. I will doe the beſt I can to get a good account, whereof the Parliament God willing ſhall be informed with my beſt care and diligence, truly my Lord I do the beſt I can to ſerve my Country, they that wiſer may doe more, but of any thing contrary to the duty of an honeſt man, the Parliament upon ſtrict examination ſhall never find me guilty, for the reputation of honeſty and fidelity is (and I can ſay no more) as deare unto me, as your eſteeming me
(EEBO-TCP ; phase 2, no. A88895)
Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 156121)
Images scanned from microfilm: (Thomason Tracts ; 21:E118[48])
Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford.
EEBO-TCP is a partnership between the Universities of Michigan and Oxford and the publisher ProQuest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by ProQuest via their Early English Books Online (EEBO) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). The general aim of EEBO-TCP is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic English-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in EEBO.
EEBO-TCP aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org).
The EEBO-TCP project was divided into two phases. The 25,363 texts created during Phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 January 2015. Anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source.
Users should be aware of the process of creating the TCP texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data.
Text selection was based on the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (NCBEL). If an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in NCBEL, then their works are eligible for inclusion. Selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. In general, first editions of a works in English were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably Latin and Welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so.
Image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. Quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in Oxford and Michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet QA standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. After proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. Any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. Understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of TCP data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. Users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a TCP editor.
The texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the TEI in Libraries guidelines.
Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements).
Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site.
This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Searching, reading, printing, or downloading EEBO-TCP texts is reserved for the authorized users of these project partner institutions. Permission must be granted for subsequent distribution, in print or electronically, of this EEBO-TCP Phase II text, in whole or in part.